In September 1872, Florence City Marshal William Edward Blair led a posse to intercept and capture members of the Clifton Shebang who had robbed Florence homes and terrorized the region for years. The gang caught by surprise included the infamous Mountain Tom Clark and two accomplices. (Courtesy Lee Freeman)

In the years after the Civil War, the court systems of northwest Alabama and southern middle Tennessee struggled to maintain law and order as murderous guerillas and bushwhackers terrorized the countryside. The most notorious gang in the area was the Clifton Shebang, known to Lauderdale County residents as “the Buggers.” Thomas “Mountain Tom” Clark (1821-1872), a deserter from both the Union and Confederate armies, was one of the leaders of this gang.

The first record of Tom Clark and the Clifton Shebang comes from an 1865 report by Captain Lot Abraham of Co. D, Fourth Iowa Cavalry, USA. Reporting to his superior about robberies by Union troops stationed near Florence, Alabama, Captain Abraham stated: “Several citizens told me they believed most of the robbing had been done by men who were with Lieutenant Thrasher.” Among them, he listed Tom Clark.

Conscript officers caught up to Clark one blustery winter day as he was building a stick chimney on his uncompleted house. Inside, his wife and newly born baby lay ill. Clark escaped from the Confederate conscript officers and went north to Clifton, in Wayne County, Tennessee, to enlist in the Union army (Lauderdale and Wayne Counties had many such Union sympathizers). But army life did not hold Clark for long, and he deserted the Union as well and soon met up with the Clifton Shebang.

Before he was brought to justice by a Florence mob in 1872, Clark boasted of killing many men. Among his victims were three people at the Wilson Plantation and three Confederate soldiers who happened to come across Clark as he was hunting another man.

According to Dr. Wade Pruitt, author of the only book about the Buggers, Tom Clark was one of twenty Buggers who conducted the raid on the Wilson plantation. They conducted a second raid into Florence in September of 1872, the criminal escapade that was to become Mountain Tom’s downfall.

The Lauderdale Times Extra of September 5, 1872, reported that, after several houses were robbed in Florence, two men were spotted “driving a sorrel mare [hitched] to a buggy” at two o’clock in the morning. At sunrise, a posse led by Florence City Marshal William Edward Blair left in pursuit of the outlaws.

According to the Times, the posse caught up to the gang near Gravelly Springs. The “elegantly dressed” outlaws, who had stopped for dinner and were in the process of unhitching their horses, were caught by surprise and put up no resistance to Marshal Blair and his men. A search of the outlaws discovered nothing. However, upon examining the buggy, a breastpin was spied sticking out of the buggy top’s lining. According to the paper, the deputies found eight watches, a handful of breastpins, and other items. Upon opening a traveling salesman's satchel the officers found “files, saws, and other burglarious instruments.”

Seeing that they were both caught and outnumbered, the outlaws surrendered their arms and were promptly placed under arrest and taken back to Florence.

Seeing that they were both caught and outnumbered, the outlaws surrendered their arms and were promptly placed under arrest and taken back to Florence where they were jailed. Sheriff Calvin Hudson, fearing the county jail insecure, deputized eight men to stand guard with the jailor. About midnight, “a great crowd” arrived at the jail demanding the keys. Refusing to hand over the keys, the jailor fired into the crowd. Reportedly, fire was returned, and the angry mob soon broke open the doors to the cells and disarmed the jailor. They dragged Clark and his two accomplices to a vacant lot across Pine Street, behind the old Masonic lodge and lynched the three criminals, hanging them from a large tree in the lot. The next morning the bodies were found by a group of citizens, who identified Clark.Thus the notorious outlaw Tom Clark met his end. Mayor Neander H. Rice ordered the bodies buried “in one of the old fields near our town.” But a legend begun perhaps in the 1930s or as late as the 1960s has it that one of the men on the burial detail remembered hearing Clark boast that “no one ever run over Tom Clark.” He got the idea to bury the outlaw outside the cemetery underneath East Tennessee Street so that everyone would “run over” Tom Clark.

This burial legend is not supported by any of the newspaper reports of the time, nor is it mentioned in subsequent accounts of the lynching. Still, a historic marker in Florence tells the story of Mountain Tom's notorious career as an outlaw, his hanging, and his ignominious burial under Tennessee Street. The true location of the outlaw's final resting place is a mystery, but his legend remains to tell a tale of turbulent times in post-Civil War Alabama.

Author

Florence, Alabama, native Lee Freeman is the head of the Local History and Genealogy Department of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. He has taught and lectured on Lauderdale County history and genealogy and was featured in the documentary history of Lauderdale County entitled Follow the River.

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